Alex Sheikman Archives - Robot 6 @ Comic Book Resources

Dark Crystal: Creation Myths Vol. 1 (Archaia Entertainment) Here is what the notes I took while reading this book say, in their entirety: “Kinda boring” and “Needs more Skeksis.”

Let me try to expand upon them a bit.

The first in a planned trilogy of original graphic novels, Creation Myths certainly lives up to its name.

Brian Froud, the creature designer who was integral in the creation of the 1982 film is credited with “Concept, character designs and cover,” and he also pens an introduction. Brian Holguin writes, while the talented Alex Sheikman and Lizzy John provide the art. Prose encapsulations of several of the stories follow, so that different versions of the same “myths” co-exist between the covers.

The work is all fine, but I found it lacking a relevance or urgency, due perhaps to how far it is removed from what I know or care of the setting and premise of the original film (a drawback that might fade in succeeding volumes) and to a more insurmountable deficiency of the medium: Comics can’t capture puppetry, the jolt of sheer wonder that accompanied seeing such bizarre creatures move so naturalistically across a movie screen that proved the film’s greatest and most enduring virtue.